The British Library – Research Libraries-I

The National Library of Great Britain, situated at London. It works through British Council library network, is one of the world’s largest research libraries. They hold 14 million books, 920,000 journal and Newspaper titles, 58 million patents and 3 million sound recordings and almost 30,000 treasures of collection. What a huge collection ?
OK, Now we have a small look on its history. It was established in 1973 (British Museum period 1753-1973), the national library was part of the British Museum. In 1983, the Library absorbed the National Sound Archive their collections known as the 'foundation collections'. These include the books and manuscripts of Sir Robert Cotton, Sir Hans Sloane, Robert Harley and King George III. However, since 1997 the main collection has been holds in a single new building on Euston Road (The largest public building in UK in the 20th century) since 2000 the Chief Executive / Director of the British Library has been Dame Lynne Brindley.
As part of copyright services, are as follows:
Submission of material for legal deposit Copies from document supply services (includes Declaration Forms for Library Privilege copies) Copies from research collection based in St Pancras Copies from newspapers Permissions clearance (for further reproduction of British Library images in any form) Legal disclaimer
Among them, document supply service is one of the most important and regular service used by most of the Research Libraries. Because The British Library manages its collections as a single entity. Material is selected according to their collection development policy and a significant portion is available for loan. British Library collection is probably the largest in the world devoted to the provision of remote document delivery. It covers every aspect of scientific, technical, medical and human knowledge, in many languages. They hold journals, books, conferences, reports, patents, theses, official publications, music scores and images. To search their collection on the web is free or to find more information about their collection, catalogues and publications.
Before we get the facility from document supply service, first we need to know how to search an article/document and how to order an article/document, it could be an interesting service through an ARTweb. These things we will learn in the NEXT stage.
Till than have a nice look on its website http://www.bl.uk/